Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/hints/volume_07/issue_07

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 12.3 KB | 216 lines

•  A4 battery pack − There may be people who are worried about the idea
suggested in Hints and Tips last month, p35, of allowing the battery
pack of an A4 laptop to be run completely flat. Let me reassure you − I
used to race radio-controlled model cars which were powered by the same
type of Nickel Cadmium battery and serious model car racers always store
the battery packs completely flat, for weeks on end, precisely to avoid
the ‘memory effect’ mentioned. There is nothing worse than the car
running out of juice on the last lap − especially when you are in the
lead! The only point to mention is that the discharging should be done
as slowly as possible for the best results.  Paul Hobbs, Germany.
7.7
•  A-Link disconnection − The A-Link cable can be disconnected from the
Pocket Book (or Psion 3)  without powering down. However, the computer
end must never be disconnected while the computer is on because the
serial port is quite sensitive. NCS.
7.7
•  A-Link/Psion 3a compatibility − Acorn confirm that for the majority
of uses, A-Link will transfer files between a RISC OS system and a Psion
3a. One area where compatibility is not assured is with some formulae
when transferring a spreadsheet file converted from 3a format to CSV.
NCS.
7.7
•  CC Turbo Driver and a printer switch − The Computer Concepts Turbo
Driver which I bought to go with the Stylus, achieves its protection by
“scrambling” the output to the parallel port, and unscrambling it with a
special cable. I was afraid that I would not be able to use my printer
switch to flip between the Stylus, driven by the Turbo, and my old
(cheaper-to-run) LQ850, driven conventionally. Happily, it seems that
the Turbo Driver, once it is installed, even though it may not be
active, scrambles everything that goes through the parallel port. So,
providing that the “unscrambling” cable is between the Archimedes and
the printer switch, all is well.  Bill Mapleson, Cardiff.
7.7
•  CC’s RISC OS 3 printer drivers − For ages, I had problems with CC’s
RISC OS 3 printers drivers for Laser Direct (at work) and the BJ10
TurboDriver (at home). They both complained that they didn’t like one of
my fonts (Freestyle that I use for my “signature”) and suggested I
switched “Quick Text off”. Unfortunately, unlike the RISC OS 2 drivers,
neither of these printer drivers has any configuration that is anything
to do with “Quick Text”.
7.7
CC themselves couldn’t tell me what the problem was or why it gave the
error or what I could do about it! Dave McCartney of DataFile came to
the rescue. (Thanks, Dave.) All you have to do is switch “Halftone” to
“Graphics only”. This is done by going through Printer Control, through
Printers Configure and then the Halftone Set. option. If you want to
continue to avoid halftones on text, remember to Save Choices.  Ed.
7.7
•  Epson Stylus and RISC OS 2 − I recently bought an Epson Stylus 1000,
a superb printer, able to take A3 paper “broadside”, but I found that I
could not get it to work properly under RISC OS 2. The problem was
solved once I had installed RISC OS 3.1. If anyone desperately wants to
make a Stylus work under OS 2, I can supply a work-around for printing
in text mode, but not in graphics mode. I imagine that the same would
apply equally to the (A4) Stylus 800, and there is some evidence that it
might not work under OS 3.0.
7.7
First thing after switching on the Stylus, send a non-printing character
to the printer by going to the command line (f12) and pressing <ctrl-B>,
<ctrl-L> and <ctrl-C> (and <return> to get back to the desktop). Then
all will be well for text printing except that I suspect things might
hang before the end of a very long file − more than 32Kb or 64Kb. I say
this because, in graphics mode, it hangs after about 32Kb, and in Hex
Dump mode, it hangs after printing exactly 64K ASCII codes. (64Kb is the
default size of the input buffer of the Stylus.)
7.7
The logic behind this is that the Stylus seems to need a pause between
the first and second character that it receives. Thus, immediately after
switching the printer on, typing at the command prompt (after hitting
<ctrl-B>) sends everything perfectly to the printer − although it will
wait until it has a few dozen characters before it will deign to
disgorge any from its buffer. On the other hand, if you program a
function key with a string of characters, switch on the printer, press
<ctrl-B>, and hit the function key (so that there are microseconds
rather than milliseconds between the characters) this will block the
connection: if the string is sent repeatedly, the Archimedes will
eventually lock, presumably with its output buffer full. If you then
press <escape> to clear the buffer, and start hitting the function key
again, all will be well. However, if the first character of the string
was different from the second, you will see that the first character is
printed twice so that the printer received the one character but then
refused to accept any more. Alternatively, if you send a file to the
printer (first thing after switching on) the printer and Archimedes will
lock. If you then abort the print on the Archimedes, and re-print, all
will be well − but with the first character of the file appearing twice.
7.7
Why all this should be so, and why Risc OS 3.1 should solve the problem
is a mystery; but I suspect that Acorn are aware of it because, in the
ReadMe file in “Printers.Canon” on the RISC OS 3.1 App2 disc, there is a
mention that, under Risc OS 3.00 or earlier, the Canon BJC-800 printer
will not print anything larger than about 7K “(the size of the buffer in
the BJC-800 printer)”.  Bill Mapleson, Cardiff.
7.7
•  Equasor − One of our customers recently experienced strange problems
using Equasor. The crosshairs that are used to place the caret when ‘New
Equation’ is selected from the Edit submenu simply locked when select
was clicked rather than disappearing to leave the caret. Equasor
continued to run and the crosshairs were erased when anything was
redrawn over the equasor window. It was impossible to create an
expression.
7.7
The problem was due to the configuration options for WimpDragDelay and
WimpDragMove both being set to zero. Presumably Equasor saw the mouse-
click event as a drag rather than a click and did not know how to
behave. With these set to the default values (5 and 32 respectively) or
any other non-zero values, the caret appeared as expected.  NCS
7.7
•  Impression date format − The hint last month (p37) about date and
time formats for Impression Style actually applies to Impression II as
well. Simply use Impression$DateFormat and Impression$ TimeFormat.
Colin Singleton, Sheffield.
7.7
•  Incorporating formulae into Impression text − For quite some time, I
have been miffed at the trouble I had fitting formulae (both Equasor and
BestForm) into my mathematical texts. Only the intensive work needed to
get thoroughly acquainted with the new Impression Style caused me to sit
down and think about formulae. (Shame on me − such a lot of time
wasted!)
7.7
As there may be one or two amongst you with the same problems, so here
is what I found out:
7.7
a) Size… − I used to have to scale the view to something like 400%, then
change the size of the characters inside the Equasor window by adjust-
dragging, until it equalled that of the main text.
7.7
What I should have done is this: Either use the same font size in
Equasor as in Impression, then make sure that the graphic frame is at
100% (this can be checked by double-clicking somewhere in the frame,
thus opening the “Alter Graphics” dialogue box) or, if the Equasor
setting is larger, scale the graphics down numerically, again with the
help of the dialogue box.
7.7
b) Position… − If you embed a small frame containing a formula into the
text with <ctrl-shift-F>, the text inside the frame will sit above the
line, because the alignment takes place between the bottom of the frame
and the line. Therefore I used to place formulae on the page manually,
which meant that every change to the text above the frame made a new
positioning necessary.
7.7
Here is what I should have done: Embed the frame, put the caret just to
the left of it, then use the manual kerning facility to shift the frame
down with repeated presses of <ctrl-J>. Then all that’s left to do is
put the caret to the right of the frame and press <ctrl-U> the same
number of times to bring the rest of the line back up.  Jochen
Konietzko, Köln, Germany
7.7
•  Inspiration on RISC OS 3 − I have found out how to get the MIDI
sequencer ‘Inspiration’ to work with RISC OS 3.10. Basically, all you do
is to load both of the template files into a template editor and ensure
that the ‘Sprite’ option is switched off for all icons. This results in
a lot of blank icons in the templates, but at least it doesn’t give
address exceptions whenever you click anything. The writers of the
program abandoned the project some years ago and the company marketing
it have ceased trading, so for the moment this is the only fix, unless
anyone else has found a better way!  Richard Millican, Manchester.
7.7
•  Keystroke − (Here is Ed’s monthly crop of keystroking!) If you have
to add and subtract as many commas as I do, you will appreciate the
following ideas that I have used. At first, I used <ctrl-alt-,> to add a
comma at the end of a word. It was just a case of clicking anywhere in
the word to be comma’d and the key inserted the text “\S-⇨\\⇦⇦⇦⇦\,” which
worked except where the word to be comma’d was at the RH end of a line
of text − because it has to go past the linefeed as well as the space.
Instead, I now use “\S-⇨\\⇦⇦⇦⇦\|?, ” as my text string (note the space after
the comma). In other words, instead of moving back one space from the
beginning of the following word before adding the comma, it deletes the
space between the two words and adds comma and space.
7.7
The other change I made to my comma’ing function was to move it from
<ctrl-alt-,> to <ctrl-alt-A>. This means that my right hand doesn’t have
to leave the mouse to hit <,> while the left hand holds <ctrl-alt>.
Instead, I can add the comma entirely with my left hand and I can
continue to look at the text rather than looking down to locate the
comma key. (Similarly, I remove a character from the end of a word now
by using <ctrl-alt-Z> (left hand only) which inserts the text “\S-
⇨\|?|? ”.)
7.7
Other keys I now use include: <ctrl-alt-S> which capitalises (or
uncapitalises) the next word. It consists of “\S-⇨\|S”. The point about
it is that it can auto-repeat and capitalise a whole line of words.
7.7
My invert words keystring has now changed to “|D\S-⇨\|V\S-⇦\\S-⇦\”. If you
compare with the hint last month, all I have done is to add a “move left
two words” at the end. This means that the cursor is brought back to the
beginning of the first of the two words inverted. The reason I do this
is that if I invert two words by mistake, I can immediately see which
two words have to be re-inverted to restore things.
7.7
•  Keystroke again − Just to show what you can do with Keystroke, I have
a key which does the following: load my Impression “envelope” file,
adjust the window so that a frame embedded within the file is in the
centre of the screen, load my standard “letter” file, adjust the size
and position, insert the date and move the cursor to the position where
I want to enter the address. I then type in the address and press
another key which copies the address, brings the envelope file to the
front, types in the address and prints the envelope. For people I write
to regularly, I can incorporate the address in the first Keystroke
sequence so that the whole thing is done with a single keystroke.  Peter
Howard, Fleet.
7.7
•  Print margins on HP DeskJet 500 − I use a monochrome DeskJet 500
printer and I have found that the actual print margins are different
from the “Generic DeskJet” settings as supplied with the RISC OS 3
printer drivers. And their A4 margins are different from their Legal and
Letter ones! The latter are, in fact, close to reality. The Legal and
Letter (Generic DeskJet) settings give the top and bottom margins as 5.1
and 20.1 cm respectively, while the A4 (Generic DeskJet) setting gives
12.5 and 19.9cm. I use the DeskJet+ driver with the colour options
turned off and my settings are 5.1cm for the top and 12.0 for the bottom
margin. The left and right margins, although differing slightly, I leave
as they are, as I (and most people, I think) usually set wider side
margins anyway. I leave the Paper Offsets at the supplied DeskJet (and/
or DeskJet+) setting i.e. 4.23 for X and 0.00 for Y.  Rex Palmer,
Middlesex.  A